Cheam School
| Established | 1645 |
|---|---|
| Type | Preparatory school |
| Headmaster | Mark Johnson |
| Founder | George Aldrich |
| Location | Headley Hampshire RG19 8LD England Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found. |
| DfE number | 850/6006 |
| DfE URN | 116520 Tables |
| Gender | Coeducational |
| Ages | 2–13 |
| Website | School website |
Cheam School is a co-educational preparatory school in Headley, in the civil parish of Ashford Hill with Headley in the English county of Hampshire. It is the world's oldest prep school[citation needed] and was founded in 1645 by George Aldrich.
Contents
History
The school started in a house called Whitehall in Cheam,[citation needed] now the site of a museum and visited on an annual basis by the younger children. The first event of any real note in the School's history was the Great Plague of London in 1665, when there was a great exodus from the City of London and villages like Cheam were suddenly overrun by children who had been sent there by wealthy parents in an attempt to escape the ravages of the plague.[citation needed]
In 1719, the School moved to Tabor Court, where it remained for over 200 years.[citation needed] The move from Cheam to the present site took place in 1934, when the area was developing from a quiet leafy village to a busy suburb. Just before it moved, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh was a pupil there. His son, Charles, Prince of Wales, was also a pupil at this school.
Two mergers in the 1990s, with Hawtreys and Inhurst House, helped to establish Cheam as a leading co-educational prep school.[citation needed]
Present day
The school has occupied its present home on the borders of Hampshire and Berkshire, with nearly 100 acres (400,000 m2) of grounds, since 1934. There are four houses (known as divisions): Aldrich (yellow), Beck (green), Gilpin (red), and Tabor (blue). The school colours are red and blue.
The school has a high level of academic work, as well as of drama productions, music and sports.[citation needed] In recent years nearly a third of leavers have gained Scholarships or Exhibitions to public schools.[citation needed] Academic awards were earned in 2010 to Winchester, Radley, Marlborough, Cheltenham Ladies' College, Wycombe Abbey, Wellington,[clarification needed] Bradfield, and Harrow; the number of scholarships for the year being seventeen.[citation needed]
School sports teams have toured South Africa, most recently in 2009 when the 1st XI cricket and 1st VII netball teams secured victories in nine out of eleven matches, as well as raising £10,000 for the local Red Cross Children's Hospital.[citation needed] Both these teams qualified for the National JET finals[clarification needed] in the same year and the cricketers repeated this achievement in 2010.[citation needed]
The current headmaster is Mark Johnson, who has been in post since 1998, and in 2007 he won the Tatler Magazine award for 'Best Headmaster of a Prep School'. Cheam now educates both boys and girls between the ages of three and thirteen and takes day-pupils as well as boarders.
Headmasters
- 1947–1963: Peter Beck[1]
- 1998–present: Mark Johnson
Notable alumni or former pupils
- Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, consort of Elizabeth II
- Charles, Prince of Wales, heir apparent of Elizabeth II
- Henry Addington, 1st Viscount Sidmouth, Prime Minister, 1801–1804
- Charles Bathurst, 1st Viscount Bledisloe
- Ivo Bligh, 8th Earl of Darnley, England's first Ashes winning captain
- Hugh Childers, Chancellor of the Exchequer, 1882–1885
- Randolph Churchill, Conservative cabinet minister and father of Winston Churchill
- Robert S. de Ropp researcher in biochemistry, and writer on human potential
- Digby Mackworth Dolben, poet
- Reginald Drax, admiral
- William Fletcher rower
- William Gilpin (priest), 'Dr Syntax', headmaster 1752-1777
- Arthur Kinnaird, 11th Lord Kinnaird, footballer and banker
- Jake Meyer 7 summits mountaineer
- John Michell, writer and esotericist.[2]
- Sukhumbhand Paribatra, 15th Governor of Bangkok
- Edward Plunkett, 18th Baron Dunsany, writer
- General Sir Harry North Dalrymple Prendergast VC, GCB (15 October 1834 – 24 July 1913) - recipient of the Victoria Cross
See also
Notes
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